Compassion Culture: TEACH it, Baby!

The field of Cultural Neuroscience is VERY interesting to me! Especially intriguing is “cultural learning mediated by brain plasticity (e.g. exposure & experiences)” ~Ambady and Bharucha (2009).

(THANKS for reading this entire post!:)

If You follow this blog, Partners in Wellness, You’ve learned that i HIGHLY value compassion!! To me, compassion culture transcends all other culture. Compassion culture must be taught. My belief is the earlier the teaching of this culture and the learning and/or adopting of compassion culture, the greater the long-term benefits/positive/wellness impact this culture will have on one’s individual life course and also the collective positive/beneficial impact on the lives of those touched by this culture globally.

Compassion culture benefits include: Mental, Emotional, Physical and Spiritual well-being. Compassion Culture leads to longevity of living as well as improving quality of living. Every aspect of an individual’s existence will be benefited by adopting a compassion culture. (For further context Please Read: Courage to Adopt a Compassion Culture! and Compassion Culture: SPEAK it, Baby!

Much of today’s suffering could and would and can be alleviated and/or eliminated by compassionate-intelligent-thinking, compassionate-intelligent-decision-making and compassionate-intelligent-living.

Since our local and global family of Beautiful-Breathing-Fragile-Life is suffering, all of us are in desperate need of compassion. Deep understanding and application of our values, practices and beliefs contribute to our well-being (or take away from it).

Do You value compassion? If You do, You must practice it. You must learn and study it. You must speak it. You must live it. You must teach it. You must stand up for it! THANK YOU so MUCH, my READERS, for standing UP for COMPASSION & letting Your Choice of Compassion manifest itself fully in all aspects of your daily living!:) Your compassionate example benefits so many and helps to improve lives!🙂 It’s not always an easy choice. It will involve inconvenience, work and sacrifice…it’s totally worth it…You will be BLESSED in so many unexpected ways:

“This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

“Tufts University psychologist Nalini Ambady, PhD, is one of the field’s pioneers. Her work has found that even as people perceive the same stimulus, their brains may activate differently.”

“For example, in a study headed by her graduate student Jonathan Freeman and published last year in Neuroimage (Vol. 47, No. 1), the researchers used fMRI to measure brain activity in American and Japanese study participants when they viewed silhouettes of bodies in postures considered “dominant” — standing tall, arms crossed, for example — and “submissive” — head and arms hanging down, for instance.”

“Ambady’s group based the study on historical data showing that East-Asian cultures value submissiveness, while Western cultures value dominance. In fact, they found, they could see this cultural distinction in the way the brain responds to visual input. When Americans viewed dominant silhouettes, but not submissive ones, reward circuitry fired in the brain’s limbic system. The opposite happened among Japanese participants; their reward circuitry fired in response to submissive, but not dominant, silhouettes.”

“We see that what the brain finds rewarding reflects the values of the dominant culture,” says Ambady. “People can see the same stimulus but have completely different neural responses.”

Any Thinking-compassionate person cannot help but notice and Read…about the culture of war and hatred…and the prominent role “religion” has played in its propagation and education:

The New York Times of July 7, 1995, reported: “Golias, a liberal, lay Catholic magazine published in Lyons [France], plans to identify 27 more Rwandan priests and four nuns who it says killed or encouraged the killings in Rwanda last year.” African Rights, a human rights organization in London, had this comment: “Even more than its silence, the churches must answer for the active complicity of some of its priests, pastors and nuns in the genocide.”

Catholic historian E. I. Watkin writes: “Painful as the admission must be, we cannot in the interest of a false edification or dishonest loyalty deny or ignore the historical fact that Bishops have consistently supported all wars waged by the government of their country. I do not know in fact of a single instance in which a national hierarchy has condemned as unjust any war . . . Whatever the official theory, in practice ‘my country always right’ has been the maxim followed in wartime by Catholic Bishops.”—Morals and Missiles (London, 1959), edited by Charles S. Thompson, pp. 57, 58.

A Catholic chaplain for the airmen who dropped the atom bombs on Japan in 1945 stated recently: “For the last 1,700 years the church has been making war respectable. It has been inducing people to believe that it is an honorable Christian profession. This is not true. We have been brainwashed. . . . The gospel of the Just War is a gospel that Jesus never taught. . . . There is nothing in the life or teaching of Jesus that would suggest that while it is illegitimate to incinerate people by a nuclear warhead, it is legitimate to incinerate people by napalm or flamethrower.”

The Catholic Herald of London stated: “The first Christians . . . took Jesus at His word and refused to be conscripted into the Roman army even if the penalty was death. Would the whole of history have been different if the Church had stuck to its original stand? . . . If the churches of today could come out with a joint condemnation of war . . . , which would mean that every member would be bound in conscience to be, like the Christians, a conscientious objector, peace might indeed be assured. But we know that this will never happen.”

Peter De Rosa, who states that he is a “patriotic Catholic,” says in his book VicarsofChrist—TheDarkSideofthePapacy: “The church was responsible for persecuting Jews, for the Inquisition, for slaughtering heretics by the thousand, for reintroducing torture into Europe as part of the judicial process. . . . Popes appointed and sacked even emperors, demanded that they impose Christianity on their subjects under the threat of torture and death. . . . The cost to the Gospel message was horrendous.”

Check out what he said about Pope Innocent III of the early 13th century, De Rosa states: “It has been reckoned that in the last and most savage persecution under [Roman] Emperor Diocletian [third century] about two thousand Christians perished, worldwide. In the first vicious incident of Pope Innocent’s Crusade [against “heretics” in France] ten times that number of people were slaughtered. . . . It comes as a shock to discover that, at a stroke, a pope killed far more Christians than Diocletian. . . . [Innocent] had no qualms about using Christ’s name to do everything Christ objected to.”

De Rosa notes that “in the pope’s name, [the inquisitors] were responsible for the most savage and sustained onslaught on human decency in the history of the race.” Of Dominican inquisitor Torquemada in Spain, he says: “Appointed in 1483, he ruled tyrannically for fifteen years. His victims numbered over 114,000 of whom 10,220 were burned.”

He concludes: “The record of the Inquisition would be embarrassing for any organization; for the Catholic church, it is devastating. . . . What history shows is that, for more than six centuries without a break, the papacy was the sworn enemy of elementary justice. Of eighty popes in a line from the thirteenth century on, not one of them disapproved of the theology and apparatus of Inquisition. On the contrary, one after another added his own cruel touches to the workings of this deadly machine. The mystery is: how could popes continue in this practical heresy for generation after generation? How could they deny at every point the Gospel of Jesus?” He answers: “Pontiffs preferred to contradict the Gospel than an ‘inerrant’ predecessor, for that would bring down the papacy itself.”

Humane?? Pius (Pious)?? Innocent??

“Pope Pius XI remarked to the German envoys how pleased he was that “the German Government now had at its head a man uncompromisingly opposed to Communism,” and on July 20, 1933, at an elaborate ceremony in the Vatican, Cardinal Pacelli (who was soon to become Pope Pius XII) signed the concordat.”

One historian writes: “The Concordat [with the Vatican] was a great victory for Hitler. It gave him the first moral support he had received from the outer world, and this from the most exalted source.” During the celebrations at the Vatican, Pacelli conferred on von Papen the high papal decoration of the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius. Winston Churchill, in his book The Gathering Storm, published in 1948, tells how von Papen further used “his reputation as a good Catholic” to gain church support for the Nazi takeover of Austria. In 1938, in honor of Hitler’s birthday, Cardinal Innitzer ordered that all Austrian churches fly the swastika flag, ring their bells, and pray for the Nazi dictator.”

“Christendom’s churches and non-Christian religions alike—have supported, condoned, or even taken the lead in the wars of the nations…” So here’s a simple question for You: What do present-day wars, hitler and the persecution of Jews/Others and the Holocaust, The Genocide of Rwanda, The Inquisition and The Crusades which included slaughter of children who were induced/forced to participate in the Children’s Crusade of 1212…as well as the modern-day sexual abuse of countless children (by priests, etc.) have in common?!…(oh and let’s not forget–the untold extinction and slaughter/abuse of animals)…a lack of compassion for Beautiful-Breathing-Fragile-Life?! a lack of compassion education?!

Questions for Consideration:

Do You think Mental Health as well as emotional, physical and spiritual health has anything to do with what we feed our mind/heart/body?

If you were in an abusive-life-threatening relationship, would you leave?

Is a Religious relationship/partnership with any organization endangering your health and longevity or the health or longevity of other Beatiful-Breathing-Fragile-Life?

Are there any benefits to organized religion?…we all need a support system of some type…we do need encouragement/support/friendship in our personal journey of compassion…IF you have such a need, why not seek out and find an organization/religion that promotes peace and teaches compassion? Does your personal circle of friends/close associates help/encourage you in your journey of living compassion?

Can you help teach it or at least support it (it: compassion education)…you can teach it — you can tweet it/share it…(don’t tweet/share/teach it for me)…tweet/talk/share/stand UP for Compassion!🙂…IF no one speaks out against the culture of hate/false counterfeit compassion…(sometimes disguised as religion or patriotism, government, etc.)…who will?? The countless dead and maimed aka voiceless victims of abuse/hate culture??

You have a Voice, don’t you?!🙂

Will you thoroughly investigate any affiliation to be sure compassion culture is practiced therein? Will you withdraw affiliation from any organization and/or religion that does not practice compassion?!

THANKS for using Your Voice to speak up for the True Culture of Compassion and against counterfeit compassion! When it comes to compassion, i encourage You to: TEACH it, Baby! 🙂